Rangers make it a lost weekend for Flyers

New York Rangers center Derek Stepan (21) watches as Philadelphia Flyers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (35) stops a shot in the second period of their NHL hockey game at Madison Square Garden in New York, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

NEW YORK -- In a season devalued by injuries to key people, the Flyers have waited for their $51 million goalie to step up and offer a bailout.

Lately, it has appeared Ilya Bryzgalov might be on the verge of doing so. The Dream Goalie the Flyers paid dearly for with the expectation of helping them solve the 37-year-old mystery of winning the big one has mostly been a large question mark. But perhaps an answer was finally forming after he allowed only one goal in four of his five previous starts.

And what better time for that to come?

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Beat New Jersey at home Saturday then take down the Rangers Sunday at Madison Square Garden, and the young, concussed Flyers would have been on top of the Eastern Conference heap.

So much for dreamy scripts.

Bryzgalov inspired so much confidence that he was only inserted into the lineup Saturday after the Devils had scored six times. Then given the chance to turn the Flyers' fortunes against a Rangers team still dominating them, neither Bryzgalov nor his paid protectors could avoid costly mistakes that led to a 5-2 Rangers victory at Madison Square Garden.

Not that there's anything unusual about that -- make it 0-4 against the cooler, calmer and much more experienced Rangers this season.

Answers anyone?

"We're just not executing to our full potential," Flyers rookie Matt Read said. "It's frustrating when you've struggled against a team all year. We just got to tighten up as a group and start putting the pucks in the right areas."

That would be such a grown-up thing to do. But the Flyers (30-16-6, 66 points) are merely a team suffering growing pains. Against the Rangers (33-12-5_71), that shows through clearly.

Still sulking over an embarrassing loss the day before to the Devils, the Flyers started this trip to New York in a nearly 10-minute funk. It took almost that long for them to get a shot on goal.

They didn't seriously threaten Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist until they got lucky, as Jakub Voracek found Brayden Schenn coming out of the penalty box all alone and with the Rangers' defense pinching in.

Schenn's breakaway goal at 12:02 of the second period ended a personal shutout streak of 182 minutes, 37 seconds by Lundqvist, and it probably woke him out of a nap -- it was the Flyers' seventh shot of the game. At least they responded by finally mustering an attack against the shot-blocking experts in Rangers uniforms and their standout goalie.

But what good does that do down the other end?

While Bryzgalov (33 saves) didn't have as bad a time as the final score would indicate, he essentially set the Flyers on the road to defeat by allowing a killer goal as the second period was about to expire. Schenn's goal had nullified a tip-in score by Artem Anisimov 1:04 into the game, and it appeared the 1-1 tie would hold into the second intermission with the Flyers clearly in control of momentum.

Then Marian Gaborik swung behind the Flyers net, shook off a check and soft-shoved the puck toward the crease. Suddenly, an itsy-bitsy spider appeared and bit Bryzgalov at the worst possible time -- with six seconds left in the period.

"Actually it was a funny bounce," Bryzgalov said, "because the puck hits me in the stick and starts, like, climbing up on the stick, over my pad and under the arm."

That's one way to describe it. Kindly Rangers coach John Tortorella characterized it another way, saying that goal was "a horses-- goal."

It didn't have to be such a dirty thing, however, since Wayne Simmonds registered a power play goal, his career-high 17th, just 57 seconds into the third to even matters again.

But while Bryzgalov had already allowed his allotted bad goal, he couldn't have expected his defense to go bad in front of him so suddenly.

First it was a flubbed shot by rookie Marc-Andre Bourdon, enabling the Rangers to break back. That run ended with Mike Del Zotto entering the zone with speed and unloading a huge one-timer that Bryzgalov couldn't have stopped even if he had spider arms.

That score, coming just 36 seconds after Simmonds' tying goal, hurt. But then Matt Carle let the puck get away and another Rangers break came, this one finished with a Brandon Dubinsky goal at 12:15. Former Flyer Rusty Fedotenko mopped up with an empty netter.

"They don't beat themselves," Carle said of the Rangers. "They clog up the middle so well it's tough to get shots through. There were a couple of mistakes tonight, myself included, where we turned pucks over and they capitalized. We're turning pucks over and not getting shots on net. When you're only generating 20 shots on goal at Lundqvist, it's going to be tough to beat them."

In the games that are left, the Flyers not only need to get healthier, but wiser, too. Their inexperience showed up with glaring intensity this weekend, with rookie mistakes and red-faced performances like that of Tom Sestito Sunday: While his team was trying to build on the attack, he offered up three fights to give the Rangers momentum and motivation.